god-fucking-dammit

it's back to school night! FUCK YEAH! MINIMUM DAY AND WE GET OUT AT 1:55 AND SHIT... oh, but wait. i live 40 minutes away from work. and i have to be here from 7 to 9 tonight. well, then. i suppose i'll just... um... blog? and sit here, shoes off, feet smelling remarkably like sourkraut, necktie over a booger-encrusted student chair, desperately ignoring the billion and ten things i SHOULD be doing right now. fuckin a.

the upside: i called in sick tomorrow because of my fucked up ribs. they're a lot better, but i figured i should call in sick friday because i didn't call in sick when it REALLY hurt, on monday. trust me: this makes perfect sense. this is known, in business circles, as "paying it forward." no, wait. i mean, "the law of aggregate returns." or something. whatever. all i know is i'll be able to sleep another hour or two in the morning, which is the most important thing that each of us should take away from this conversation.

so, yeah. in a week i've torn through almost the entire ultimate spider-man run and i have to give it a grade of B. the first fifty issues were pretty spot on, character-wise, and, relatively speaking, art-wise. after issue fifty it all kind of turns into this weird, oddly self-referrential mush. i mean, come on: ultimate moon knight? ultimate master of kung-fu? who has a fucking BOWL CUT (p.s. bagley, what's the deal with you and bowl cuts? there are way too many of them in your stuff)? ultimate RONIN? bendis, shame on you for giving the world ultimate ronin. i understand how it all fits into the story, but that's like dj shadow sampling himself. wait, no. that's like dj jazzy jeff sampling himself. the story wasn't good enough to let that be "clever." it was more "silly."

in the middle chunk of that fifty-issue run, though, mark bagley really kind of started stepping up in the art dept; i really, really don't think he's a very good artist, but he had a run that was, relatively speaking, flawless. the first couple arcs are really bad, and the last few arcs are even worse (hello? BOWL CUT?). stuart immonenn, though, is fackin amazing (r.i.p. nextwave), and i think the book may have a renaissance thanks to him being hired. i certainly respect bagley being a workhorse and churning out issues nonstop, and comics needs guys like that around to show everyone how it's fucking done, but in the end i would rather just have a trade paperback with steve mcniven or travis charest art that took five years to finish than a timely, average book which doesn't do much other than give us totally underused ultimate b-list marvel characters and an ultimate daredevil that's... exactly like the normal one.

next time i write about bendis, remind me to talk about how it seems like his stories are made up as he goes, as if he's constantly dictating what he thinks would be cool to an ever-present comic geek stenographer. ok, i have to do work now. bye.